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Security report for politecnicoguarda.pt

Instituto Politécnico da Guarda · Education · Portugal

Medium risk. 10 critical or high findings in GDPR outside view, Email security and 2 other checks.

Security score

60/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

Instituto Politécnico da Guarda is a public polytechnic higher education institution based in Portugal, offering a wide range of undergraduate, master, and professional courses. It serves students, researchers, and the local community with educational programs, research projects, and community services. The website reflects a well-established institution with a clear regional focus and a commitment to academic excellence and community engagement. Technically, the website is built on WordPress with modern plugins and themes, providing good performance, mobile optimization, and SEO. Security posture is solid with HTTPS and security headers, though cookie consent and formal security policies are absent. Overall, the site is professional, trustworthy, and compliant with GDPR, but could improve privacy and security transparency.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
25/ 100 · Critical
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

10 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • Critical

      EU business without adequate privacy measures

      EU businesses are subject to strict GDPR requirements

      What to do: Implement comprehensive GDPR compliance including privacy policy, cookie consent, and data protection measures

    • High

      No Privacy Policy found

      GDPR requires a clear and accessible privacy policy

      What to do: Add a comprehensive privacy policy page and link to it prominently

  2. Email security

    SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.

    • Critical

      No email authentication configured

      Domain is vulnerable to email spoofing

      What to do: Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC immediately

  3. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching politecnicoguarda.pt

This scan found 21 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

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Recommended

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
62
Security headers
55
Email security
40
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
25
Average
60

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

The institution holds a stable market position as a regional public higher education provider in Portugal. Its business model revolves around public funding and tuition fees for a diverse portfolio of courses. The website indicates active engagement in research and community services, with partnerships such as the Egitania Sciencia publication and local cultural venues. The target audience includes students (local and international), academic staff, and regional stakeholders. The institution demonstrates consistent branding and content quality, supporting its credibility and growth potential.

Security posture

The website employs HTTPS with strong SSL configuration and several security headers, indicating a mature security posture. Use of reCAPTCHA suggests protection against automated abuse. However, the absence of a visible security policy, incident response contacts, and vulnerability disclosure mechanisms limits transparency. No vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were detected in the provided content. Recommendations include implementing cookie consent, publishing security policies, and establishing formal incident response channels to enhance trust and compliance.

Recommendations

  1. Implement a visible cookie consent banner to comply with EU regulations.
  2. Publish a comprehensive security policy and incident response plan on the website.
  3. Add a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.
  4. Provide explicit security contact emails (e.g., security@ or abuse@) for incident reporting.
  5. Regularly audit and update WordPress plugins and themes to mitigate vulnerabilities.

Contact details published on the site

Addresses
Legal name
Instituto Politécnico da Guarda
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Instituto Politécnico da Guarda
Description
O Instituto Politécnico da Guarda é uma instituição de ensino superior politécnico pública portuguesa, com sede na cidade da Guarda, onde se localizam três das suas quatro escolas superiores, e uma escola superior na cidade de Seia.
Key services
Higher education courses (Licenciaturas, Mestrados, CTESP), Research and innovation projects, Community services and campus facilities, International student programs and mobility, Social action and student support
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
WordPress, Elementor, Yoast SEO, jQuery, The Events Calendar plugin, PHP, Google Fonts, SVG Support plugin
Frameworks
WordPress CMS
Platforms
Web
Performance
moderate
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Use of security headers
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of reCAPTCHA script for forms

Analytics and tracking

Tracking level
minimal
Privacy practices
good

Advertising

Tracking pixels
Google reCAPTCHA
Marketing tools
Yoast SEO
Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Website is a public higher education institution in Portugal.
  2. Content is comprehensive and well-structured with multilingual support (Portuguese and English).
  3. No signs of malicious or suspicious content.
  4. Security best practices are mostly followed but cookie consent is missing.
  5. No visible contact emails or phone numbers in the HTML content provided; contact likely via contact page forms.
  6. Events calendar and news sections are actively maintained with future dated events.
  7. Use of modern WordPress plugins and themes indicates active maintenance.
Technical notes

Notes

The website is powered by WordPress CMS with Elementor page builder and Yoast SEO plugin, indicating a modern and flexible technical infrastructure. It uses jQuery and integrates The Events Calendar plugin for event management. The site loads Google Fonts and SVG support for enhanced visuals. Performance is moderate with good mobile responsiveness and accessibility features. The site structure and metadata are well implemented, including Open Graph and JSON-LD structured data for SEO. Hosting provider details are not explicit but the SSL and performance suggest a reliable hosting environment. Opportunities exist to optimize performance further and enhance privacy compliance.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

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